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Saturday, April 13, 2013

Reebok released a statement on Thursday announcing it had severed ties with Ross.
"Reebok holds our partners to a high standard, and we expect them to live up to the values of our brand," the statement read. "Unfortunately, Rick Ross has failed to do so. While we do not believe that Rick Ross condones sexual assault, we are very disappointed he has yet to display an understanding of the seriousness of this issue or an appropriate level of remorse. At this time, it is in everyone's best interest for Reebok to end its partnership with Mr. Ross."

For a company which makes things for people to run in - they also manufacture singlets - they seem to move incredibly slowly. But they got there in the end.

DJ Paul Gambaccini said Sunday's show had become "part of the BBC history of censorship".

In some religions of Northern Europe, the Gambaccini is a mythical creature whose appearance sharing an opinion on the deceased represents the start of that person's journey into the afterlife.

The argument over a song has obviously been crafted to tempt the wise counsel of the Gambaccini from the spirit world.

In related news, it seems that Rob Wilson, Tory MP for Reading East, doesn't know very much about recent history:

However, the Conservative MP for Reading East, Rob Wilson, said the track should be played in its entirety.

He said: "I think that Margaret Thatcher would be horrified having helped free millions of people in eastern Europe and been the symbol of freedom around the world that she could in any way have censorship in her own country."

That's right, Rob. The woman who spent our cash so lavishly trying to stop publication of Spycatcher, and who created the farce where Irish Republican statements had to be rendered like some form of badly-dubbed foreign movie would be horrified at that. Jesus, the woman even tried to redact British Airways plane liveries.

Friday, April 12, 2013

Whoever would have thought the legacy of Thatcher would turn out not to be a debate over the merits of Keynes against Alan Walters, but a silly spat over a song from The Wizard Of Oz.

It's telling that the big fans of Thatcher have, through their orchestrated attacks on the BBC, managed to turn what might have been a sombre week of reflection into a giggling morass of point and counterpoint over the Munchkin's signature tune.

It then gets funnier, because they cry "but you keep talking about it", thereby churning the story on and on. What would have been a Facebook campaign to control the commanding heights of the lower 20s of the chart has instead become the dominant theme of Thatcher coverage.

Clearly, now, more people are buying the record to make Charles Moore go even more vermillion in the face than to dance on Maggie's grave. Every column inch in the Mail turns what had been a bad taste kick of a corpse into a much more cheerful tweak of the establishment's nose.

But hey: why don't the Thatcher fans try and counter this protest by showing how much she was loved by a portion of the population?

Uh... I was thinking more of that Thatcher single where she read the Gettysburg Address, or maybe Telstar, which was one of her favourites. But, er, yes, if you want to endorse The NotSensibles, a group who were self-identifying as being not sensible, clearly taking the very piss out of the idea of anyone being in love with Margaret Thatcher, go for it.

I'm expecting Nadine Dorries to be pushing Shipbuilding in the belief that all that talk about reopening the shipyards is an endorsement of Thatcher's industrial policies.

Meanwhile, after days of speculation over whether the BBC will or won't play Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead on Sunday, Radio One's uncomfortable-in-a-suit controller Ben Cooper has managed to concoct the most wonderful fudge by proclaiming that they'll play five seconds and talk about the song.

He was on BBC News a short while ago, trying to suggest that what might appear to be fudge is something else entirely - maybe butterscotch, or cinder toffee.

At one point he said something which will only prolong the agonies - that it was inappropriate to play an attack on a person "who hasn't yet been buried".

Which means that a week on Sunday, once the former Prime Minister is in the ground, he might have to drag through the decision again. Does the change in status from above to below the horizon suddenly make a difference?

There's no indication why five seconds is any worse or better than the full fifty-six seconds. Either the song is offensive - in which case, don't play it; or it isn't, in which case play it in full.

Cooper suggests when Rage Against The Machine was number one, they edited that record and this is the same thing. Except it isn't, is it? There's a difference between removing a "fuck" from a record going out on the radio, and removing fifty one seconds of a track not because of the content of the song but because of the imputed motivations of the people buying it.

Just time for a quick look at the Sony nominations - congratulations to Lauren Laverne, Jarvis Cocker and Cerys Matthews for their recognition. Seeing those names together makes the awards list look like the cover of Select magazine.

Also nice to see Danny Baker getting better treatment here than he got at Radio London.

There's a nice piece about Thatcher's influence on the media by Maggie Brown over on MediaGuardian, although if focuses on TV so doesn't mention the damage she and her government wrought to commercial radio.

The delicate ecosystem which supported genuinely local radio - often doing interesting things - got disrupted in the late 80s when the Thatcher government issued an edict that simulcasting was a waste of scarce resources, and if stations continued to broadcast the same programmes on FM and AM, they would have to surrender one of the frequencies.

Spooked, the incumbents suddenly felt compelled to launch entirely new stations, at a stroke doubling their day-to-day costs while - generally - not increasing the size of the audience. With the economics of the industry trashed, the result was a series of takeovers and amalgamations which has led to the current situation where "local" radio is now anything but.

The convicted criminal Moore was appearing on a current affairs programme which, rapidly, had changed its location to Thatcher's Finchley and reformatted itself as a Thatcher special; on a channel which on Monday had cleared what felt like seventeen hours of prime time for a soft obituary which nobody watched, and is planning lavish coverage of her funeral. Naturally, then, Moore saw nothing but hate coming from the BBC.

As an example, he referred to the Ding Dong erm, ding dong, which - shortly after saying that vile people were being "bigged up every day" (really) he described this way:

I heard today a ludicrous thing on the PM programme. They're trying to get... basically the BBC is trying to get this Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead um, up to the top of the charts...

Hang about. The BBC are trying to do this? How, exactly?

... by going on and on and on about whether it should be banned and all this nonesense.

He then went into a strange sidebar on how Thatcher is Dorothy.

So, in Moore's view, merely having a debate about if the song should or shouldn't be played if it makes the Top 40 is "trying to get this up to the top of the charts."

On which basis, this will make him furious:
If only Charles Moore knew people at the Telegraph, he could remonstrate with them for trying to get Ding Dong to the top of the charts by going on and on and on about whether it should be banned.

It's just a coincidence... it's just a coincidence... it's just a coincidence...
But the current front page of the BBC One website does make it look like Morrissey is trying to restrain himself from pouring tea over the former Prime Minister.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

There's a thoughtful piece from Dan Martin on the NME site right now which explains why he won't be buying Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead, which is right... up to a point.

Martin's view is that it makes "us" as bad as "them":

On the most very basic level, Thatcher’s ideologies are repulsive, because their basis is mean-spirited and nasty.

And it’s according to those very basic principles that I would identify myself as a member of the left.

Cut through the rhetoric and the politics of the right are those of selfishness. Selfishness in turn is inherently mean.

I’ll tell you what else is mean: celebrating somebody’s death with a tedious chart-hyping Facebook campaign.

Well, yes. As I said on Twitter on Monday, there's nothing to celebrate in the death of a frail, lonely old lady; nor is there anything to celebrate in what she did to the nation.

But this doesn't make Martin totally right.

First of all, it doesn't make any attempt to understand why people may - all these years on - still be so angry as to do actually make good on those threats to tramp the dirt down.

Dan tries to suggest he gets it:

I was born three days before she came to power and grew up in a Merseyside community that she decimated. It was impossible not to be politicised; I remember singing ‘Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead’ to myself on the day she was deposed. Nobody had died, and I was 11.

Dan, are you sure that you can compare being an eight year-old kid on the Wirral (a place which has so made its peace with the past that it often has a Tory council these days) with, say, the experience of people who were born into a mining village and now live in something that isn't even quite a village?

Aren't you falling into the trap of that other Tory PM, the one who wanted us to condemn a little more, and understand a little less?

More importantly, though, is the very premise of the piece:

Margaret Thatcher ‘Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead’ Campaign Is An Embarrassment for the Left

Well, no. No it isn't, unless you believe that there are only two sides in politics; that there's a wobbly line down the middle of the world, somewhere off to the left of Nick Clegg, and that everybody on that side is one team - Thatcher, Cameron, Clegg, Williams, Hitler, Attila The Hun; and everybody on the other is the rest - hopefully Miliband, Benn, Stalin, people downloading Ding Dong and Attila The Stockbroker.

This 'you're either with us or against us', this 'them and us' - that's one of the brittle legacies of the Thatcher era. Billy Bragg had a song called 'Which Side Are You On', but that fell into a false dichotomy; that was Thatcher's trap.

You still see it today - The Sun's stock in trade is to suggest that everyone on the left is involved in some sort of group-think, that welcoming the renationalisation of the East Coast Line means you also want to liquidate the Kulaks.

Louise Mensch is so firmly convinced that there are only two options she made a fool of herself on Twitter claiming that because Tony Benn was able to say something positive about Maggie, he therefore "loved" her.

And this... well, this is the same. Some people are truly, truly happy that Thatcher is dead. Some people find it amusing to sing a song that celebrates that death, although they might feel ashamed of themselves if they realised they were glorying in death much as Thatcher gloried in slaughter. Some may even have a party while they watch the funeral.

These people may all be to the left of Thatcher. But they are not "The Left", and they are not even "the left".

Because politics that is just two choices isn't politics, it's screeching.

And that's part of the world Thatcher tried to create. You're fighting a battle in a playground she defined.

Be disgusted if you wish; condemn if you must. But don't suggest that anyone who opposes Thatcher represents everyone who opposes Thatcher. Because there are, actually, many alternatives.

Here's a story from The Daily Express. Skip past the the headline and first bit - where a person who does drama sessions at school is misleading described as a "teacher" to ramp up the outrage - and focus on the foaming about the chance Radio One might play Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead this weekend:

BBC radio chiefs risk a furious backlash by playing a song which has become the anthem of anti-Baroness Thatcher protesters, it emerged last night.

The chart hasn't been compiled yet; the record hasn't been played yet; there is no backlash, furious or otherwise. But the Express has the blood pumping.

A massive online campaign has seen Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead, taken from the Wizard Of Oz, rocket into the Top 10 of the official midweek charts.

But with the tune a strong contender for the No1 spot this weekend, bosses have failed to rule out playing it during the official countdown.

In a statement the BBC said: "Radio 1 will run through the official chart update as normal, however, we only play a selection of entries each week.

"The chart show on Sunday is an account of what the public has been buying and we will make a decision about playing it when the final chart positions are clear."

Oddly, the Express doesn't seem all that bothered about the chart shows on commercial radio, who are presumably in exactly the same position. And those music TV stations who run down the charts too. Almost as if this was more about having a pop at the BBC than an actual story.

Isn't the point the Express has missed that the only expression of "furious backlash" here is that demonstrated by people who are buying the track in the first place?

Margaret Thatcher looked stunning, yes;
but why no nipples in the Daily Express?

I'm sure somewhere in the middle of this, Liam Gallagher thinks he's making some sort of hilarious joke:

LIAM GALLAGHER has started getting his excuses in for BEADY EYE’s new album title, BE.
And, strangely enough, he’s putting the blame on JUSTIN BIEBER.
Liam said: “My theory is that it’s gonna have BE on the cover, and then on the back I-E-B-E-R.
“Biiiiieee-ber! I’ve got his f****** back, man.”

Obviously, having lumbered the album with such a clunky title - not even working up the being arsedness to make it self-titled - there's got to be a creation myth. This isn't it.

Hang on, though: there's more:

Liam also defended Bieber after the little trumpet went on stage late at The O2 arena last month, claiming more bands should do the same.

He said: “Anyone who goes on two hours late is f****** right in my book, man.

Given that Thatcher was probably the only person who could dig heels in more firmly than Mozzer, you won't be surprised to hear that Moz isn't exactly holding back the tears:

Thatcher will only be fondly remembered by sentimentalists who did not suffer under her leadership, but the majority of British working people have forgotten her already, and the people of Argentina will be celebrating her death. As a matter of recorded fact, Thatcher was a terror without an atom of humanity.

After yesterday, when news outlets abandoned any attempt at balance or analysis - to have the television on was a glimpse into what it must be like to be in a Gove-approved history class - it's refreshing to have an alternative view.

Sunday, April 07, 2013

Bailey joined The Angels in 1976, after a reshuffle saw original bassist Doc Neeson take on lead vocals. Before, he'd been a member of loose collective the Mount Lofty Rangers alongside AC/DC's Bon Scott, Peter Head, Jimmy Barnes and some welders.

The band managed to be at the heart of a mini-riot on the steps of Sydney Opera House when a New Years Eve gig went to shit; Bailey was knocked unconscious by a thrown bottle and Neeson received injuries requiring hospital treatment.

He remained an Angel through their glory years, leaving in 1982 to try his luck in America. His luck didn't play well in the US, and he returned to Australia a couple of years later, playing in (and then managing) Gangajang.

As is so often the case, there was a bunch of muddied reunions of The Angels in subsequent years - Bailey joining a 2001 troupe called Members Of The Angels; then The Original Angels Band (despite him not being an original Angel); an actual reunion as The Angels in 2008 (the only one to feature Doc Neeson); and, finally, The Angels With Dave Gleeson. His illness led to him leaving this latest iteration of the band last year.